“Give me liberty, or give me death:” Remembering Patrick Henry, the Forgotten Founder
Patrick Henry was enormously popular during the American Revolution. Even Thomas Jefferson, who over time developed a deep loathing of Henry (some would say jealousy), had to admit that “it is not now easy to say what we should have done without Patrick Henry.” Edmund Randolph, a patriot leader in his own right, explained that “It was Patrick Henry … awakening the genius of his country, and binding a band of patriots together to hurl defiance at the tyranny of so formidable a nation as Great Britain.”
Yet, today, Patrick Henry is ill-remembered; most Americans might recall at best perhaps a snippet from a famous speech: “give me liberty, or give me death.” The reasons for our historic forgetfulness are several: after the Revolution, Henry chose to oppose ratification of the U.S. Constitution, believing that it created a distant and too-powerful government, and he refused proffered position in George Washington’s administration, diminishing his historic memory. Equally important, Henry died in 1799 shortly after a political campaign in which, at Washington’s behest, he opposed Jefferson’s and James Madison’s ill-advised radical states’ rights attack on the U.S. government, and Jefferson spent the next twenty-six years systematically attacking Henry’s legacy.
Patrick Henry, who helped to ignite a revolution, deserves better. This course will explore how he over¬came challenges to reach the pinnacle of Virginia politics and unite Americans behind a challenge to Britain – the eighteenth century’s super-power, why he opposed the U.S. Constitu¬tion, and why he then came out of retirement to defend the people’s Constitution against the attacks of Jefferson and Madison.
Participants should evaluate Henry’s role in proclaiming a revolution and consider whether he had an equally important role in saving it. The course should also develop an improved appreciation for the complex political, economic, and religious forces that shaped the early republic. As a biographical course, it also demonstrates how personalities play an important role in even the most foundational national history.
Image Attribution:
The background image for this webpage is Patrick Henry before the Virginia House of Burgesses by Peter F. Rothermel (1851) with special thanks to the owner, the Patrick Henry Memorial Foundation. The painting of Patrick Henry's 1765 "Caesar had his Brutus" speech (discussed in the second lecture) is entirely romanticized -- neither Henry nor the House of Burgesses looked at all like this -- but it does show that hagiography of Henry, almost god-like veneration, began shortly after this death.

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John Ragosta

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In 1788, the ratification of the US Constitution hung in the balance. It's a little hard for us to understand given what we think of the US Constitution today, but it really wasn't clear that it would be ratified, and Patrick Henry was the leader of the Anti-Federalists standing in opposition to the Constitution. He believed that the Constitution created a federal government too powerful and too distant from the people. All eyes were on Patrick Henry as the debates went on for weeks down in Richmond. He had made a number of presentations but his final speech was in some ways the most interesting. He knew that the debates were going to hang in the balance, the vote was going to be very close, and he got up to talk about his fear with what might happen under the Constitution. As he began to speak a summer thunderstorm came up. Now if you've ever been in Virginia for a summer thunderstorm, they can be really rather dramatic. And lightning started and the thunder and its rumbling, and Patrick Henry is rising to speak. And he says, "I see the awful immensity of the dangers with which it is pregnant. I see it. I feel it. I see beings of a higher order anxious concerning our decisions...." People were spellbound; he's playing to the thunderstorm as if he's using the lightning and the thunder to help his arguments. "The spirits whom he called seem to have come at his bidding..." one of the observers wrote. "He seemed to mix in the fight of his aetherial auxiliaries, and 'riding on the wings of the tempest, to seize upon the artillery of Heaven.'" This is classic Patrick Henry. He's convinced the audience that he's calling down the thunder and lightning because of his fear over the Constitution. It's an extraordinarily powerful speech, but it's a speech for a purpose. He was really trying to defeat the ratification of the US Constitution. Now we know that Henry didn't win that battle, but his actions did have a major influence on our understanding of the Constitution today and in particular on the Bill of Rights. We'll come back to all of that. There's a few other things we need to talk about first.